Fairtrade or ‘Fairer Trade’? Who knew that the use of a comparative could cause so much fuss? What with Sainsbury’s dropping the Fairtrade label from its own-brand teabags in favour of a ‘Fairer Trade’ label, that’s exactly what has happened. Ignoring the fact that Sainsbury’s actually announced this move back in May, certain commentators (including some Labour MPs such as Andy McDonald and Stella Creasy) have only just now cottoned on to it, and (for some reason) have decided that this is ‘a bad thing’.
It’s just a shame, however, that those people damning Sainsbury’s for making this change hold a very naïve view about the impact of Fairtrade. Put simply, they seem to believe that the fact that consumers in the UK pay higher prices for Fairtrade products here means that farmers in developing countries receive higher prices for crops they’re already growing. They then use this very simple view to try to support their claim that Fairtrade benefits people in developing countries (and who among us wouldn’t want that?).
Unfortunately, this simplistic view fails to consider fully the impact of the Fairtrade scheme on farmers – in particular, their naïve reasoning does not take into account the impact of higher crop prices on farmers’ incentives.
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